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Kimberly Marion Suiseeya joined the Nicholas School of the Environment on Jan. 1 as an associate professor of environmental policy in the Environmental Social Systems division. Suiseeya studies how historically marginalized groups affect and are affected by environmental policies, and how researchers influence environmental justice.

“The core questions that really motivate me are, what shapes how people experience the world? How is it that the decisions that we make internationally impact the people who are most vulnerable? How do we govern the environment in ways that enhance people’s well-being and their experiences with international law and policy?” Suiseeya said.

A circuitous path led her to environmental policy. After graduating with a degree in international relations and politics from Scripps College, Suiseeya enlisted in the Peace Corps in Georgetown, Guyana, where she helped kids cultivate decision-making and relationship-building skills and taught them about HIV and AIDS prevention.

After the Peace Corps and back in the states, Suiseeya began thinking more about the role of forests and nature in supporting human well-being. She took a position as a volunteer coordinator for the Appalachian Mountain Club and, later, as a regional conservation organizer with the Sierra Club.

“Working in environmental advocacy coupled with my experiences with communities at the so-called ‘margins’ moved me toward environmental policy and thinking about how policies have real, tangible impacts on peoples’ day-to-day lives,” she said.

In 2007, Suiseeya received a Boren Fellowship to work in Laos for the International Union for Conservation of Nature while pursuing a master’s in international environmental policy. After graduating, she remained in Laos as a consultant for the World Bank.

“Laos had the first and, at the time, only scientifically designed national protected area system in Southeast Asia. It covered 20% of the land in Laos, with every ecosystem represented across 21 protected areas,” Suiseeya said.

These protected areas encompassed multiple Indigenous communities within their borders — a response to other conservation approaches that pushed people from their homelands, according to Suiseeya.

“Key to such ‘people and parks’ initiatives were efforts to ensure that these forest communities were involved in and benefitted from conservation approaches like ‘participatory management’ and alternative livelihood programs,” Suiseeya said. “However, those strategies didn’t really work.”

Suiseeya’s experience in Laos motivated her to pursue a Ph.D. at the Nicholas School. For her dissertation, she explored perspectives of justice in the context of forest policymaking in Laos, from the level of an international governing body — specifically, the — to the level of local communities.

“The dissertation finds that we think about justice in specific and narrow ways that don’t really address the justice concerns of people on the ground,” Suiseeya explained.  

Her research — which forms the basis of Suiseeya’s forthcoming book, The Justice Gap in Global Forest Governance — paved the way for her work as an assistant professor at Purdue University, followed by a tenure-track position at Northwestern University.

“A lot of my work is really about how to make it possible for people’s voices to be heard, even if the decisions made are materially not what they wanted. The that people will accept those decisions if they feel that the process was meaningful and fair,”  Suiseeya said. “A lot of what we do in environmental justice scholarship is describe injustice, but we don’t really theorize what justice is or could be. I’m trying to move toward the latter.”

The Nicholas School affords the ideal research setting, according to Suiseeya.

“This actually was my dream job. You never anticipate being able to go back to where you did your Ph.D.,” she said. “I’m thrilled, because I love working in interdisciplinary spaces.”